Our Mission to Africa: Life in Sierra Leone

We had a wonderful stay in Sierra Leone these last couple of weeks. Michelle fell in love with Freetown. It is unlike any city we've ever been in. The city is built on the side of a mountain. Think of a steep logging road back home in Montana and build homes and huts and business all along these roads and you have a good picture of Freetown.

These are kids playing on the beach next to the airport which is located across the bay from Freetown. You have to take a water taxi or ferry to get to freetown--this takes about an hour. All the kids love to ham it up.

This photo shows one of the nicer areas in Freetown. This street is paved, but most are dirt. In town the primary means of transportation is a moto, but in Freetown there are poda-podas (like our tro-tro's in Ghana).

I love this photo. I took it in Kenema from the missionary apartment. We have six missionaries living in Kenema.

Typical Africa. Bananas everywhere.

How many people can you fit in the a tro-tro (poda-poda)? The answer is: one more. There is always room for one more no matter how crowded it is.

Street hawkers--the same in every country here in West Africa.

Most of the streets in Freetwon look like this. Packed with people, houses, and cars.

The cheapest and quickest form of transportation.

This photo typifies Africa. You will rarely see a picture like this of a man.

I love these little gardens. So green and orderly right in the middle of the city.

Even the kids are busy on the streets.

The movie store. These movies are all hodgie-copies. Meaning they are pirated movies. People will go into a theatre with a video camera and tape the movie. Its real annoying to try to watch one of these as you see poeple walking up and down the isle, coughing, people chomping on popcorn etc. One redeeming quality is that they are cheap.

The following are a few random photos of life on the streets of Freetown.

We had the AP's as our guide for a couple of days. We brought them to the hotel for dinner--where you can look over the city and the sea.

We did health screenings on all of the missionaries in this mission.

Our mobile clinic was the mission van.

When in doubt, I have learned to ask Sister Fife--she always knows the answer. Elder and Sister Randall are the office couple and we joined them and the Roggias for a trip to the chimp sanctuary.

President and Sister Roggia (also grew up in Montana) seem custom fit to run this mission.

Sister Fife waiting for our driver at the missionary apartment. We had quite an experience with our driver. We hired a driver for two days to take us inland to Bo and Kenema. It was expensive--like 200 dollars a day. The second day was wasted as we had one flat tire that took about 2 hours to repair, and then promptly had a second flat tire. We filled up with gas (about a quarter of a tank) and started on the road--some 4 hours to Freetown. We were quite concerned about the gas situation because he only put in 1/4 of a tank. "No problem," he said. "I drive this all the time." Well, about two hours into our little trip, the gas light came on. "No problem," again. When he finally turned off the AC because the fuel was too low, we knew that we were in trouble. We ran out of gas and he managed to put in another 300,000 L (about 5 bucks) worth. Again, we expressed our concern that we didn't have enough to make it all the way to Freetown. We wound up running out of gas twice, but don't worry because it was "NO PROBLEM". Anyway, all of our scheduled visits for the day were cancelled, but we made it back to Freetwon--no problem.

This is the only mission (I think in the world) where riding on a moto is acceptable. In Bo, this is how the missionaries get around. I couldn't get Sister Fife to try it out. Don't show the missionaries in the other missions as this is strictly forbidden.